Your Right to Know

By Ellen Barry &Rick GladstoneThe New York Times • Friday December 14, 2012 7:50 AM

MOSCOW — Russia’s top Middle East diplomat and the leader of NATO offered dark and strikingly
similar assessments of the embattled Syrian president’s future yesterday, asserting that he was
losing control of the country after a nearly two-year conflict that has taken 40,000 lives and has
threatened to destabilize the Middle East.

The bleak appraisals, particularly from Russia, a steadfast Syrian ally, amounted to a new level
of pressure on Bashar Assad, who has resorted to increasingly desperate military measures,
including the use of Scud ballistic missiles, to contain an armed insurgency.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov acknowledged that Assad’s forces could be
defeated by rebels, whom the Syrian leader has repeatedly dismissed as ragtag foreign-backed
terrorists with no popular support.

“Unfortunately, it is impossible to exclude a victory of the Syrian opposition,” said Bogdanov.
It was the clearest indication to date that Russia believed that Assad could lose.

Bogdanov’s remarks, reported by Russia’s Interfax news service, came as the secretary-general of
NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told reporters in Brussels that Assad’s use of ballistic missiles,
which Western officials reported Wednesday but Syria has denied, reflected his “utter disregard”
for Syrian lives. Rasmussen also predicted the demise of Assad’s government.

“I think the regime in Damascus is approaching collapse,” he told reporters after a meeting with
the Dutch prime minister at NATO headquarters. “I think now it is only a question of time.”While
the leaders of NATO member states have made similar predictions before, the assertion by Rasmussen,
the leader of the Western military alliance, reinforced a growing consensus that Assad’s options
for remaining in power had been all but exhausted — a view now apparently shared by Russia.

Throughout the crisis, Russia has acted as Syria’s principal international shield, protecting
Assad diplomatically from Western and Arab attempts to oust him.